THRILL CLIMB

Forg­ing a seem­ingly im­pos­si­ble path on his KTM 250 EXC-F, for­mer tri­als rider Philipp Scholz fights to re­main in the mix dur­ing the 2017 Red Bull Hare Scramble. Held an­nu­ally in the Erzberg mine in Aus­tria since the mid-1990s, this bru­tal race con­tains 15 dif­fer­ent check­points over four hours and is lit­tered with beds of sharp rocks, de­cep­tive ravines, and near-unimag­in­able hill climbs. Of the fastest 500 rid­ers who qual­i­fied, only a hand­ful were re­silient enough to taunt the “Iron Gi­ant” to the point of mo­men­tous de­feat, all for a sim­ple tro­phy—made of rock.